Revised copy

This investigation focuses on one especial aspect of the early thinking of William James, not sufficiently
addressed from a historical perspective: his reflection about morality and religion, strongly based on
personal experiences, on which I find information in his Letters, and are reflected in his publications The
Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897), The Varieties of Religious Experience
(1902) y Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1899).

James concerns are the same as those of a group of European intellectuals who deal with the crisis of
end of the century XIX and the beginning of the XX. During this time a culture of uncertainty is started
by the fall of the antics metaphysical guarantees due to many criticisms (Neo-Kantian, Positivist, etc.)
which undermine the foundations of thought and traditional ways of life and by the impact of the
powerful natural scientific development (Darwinism). In the absence of those ultimate certainties which
sustain a transcendent world of stable values, the challenge is try to discern ways of comprehension and
articulation not reductive and impoverishing of the experiences that are capable of containing the
complexity of the real as showed by the advance of knowledge.

In this scenario it is forbidden to insist on the validity and legitimacy of the traditional foundations of
values, as stated by Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle (very influential in Jamess work) in the only
subjective certainty of a religious character. James knows how to oppose to this regressive
compulsion (present in many of his contemporaries) the Pathos of an honest seriousness, who between
the opposite attitudes of easy going and strenuous mood, he does not hesitate to choose the latter. The
fight against all forms of relaxation induced by the lack of transcendent certainty is clearly present in the
early period which goes from his early writings to The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). It is a
period characterized by the pressing challenge of responding to the morbid and existential crises that
perhaps can be characterized as "religious" and whose consequences substantially affect the moral life.
The Bible and the Charles Removers Essais constitute central readings and intense stimulus for
reflection of the religious experiences (mysticism) and of the Promethean question of the liberty.

At present the interest of this research on William James centers on the plexus of reflection and
experience of my own, epochal and personal crisis, in which the philosopher explores the possibilities
and philosophical understanding of moral and religious life being free from the metaphysical
constriction. In particular, we are interested in investigating the world of reading that constitutes
relevant material and stimulus for its own reflection. Among the well-known thinkers in the English
language, novelist and historian Thomas Carlyle is, certainly, a source of greater importance concerning
the peculiar "religious" authority of the hero and faith in an "age without God." Another important
figure is Shadworth H. Hodgson with whom he discussed ontology and maintains a rich exchange of
letters. The opportunity of having access to libraries of the cultural background of northern Britain, such
as the University College Dublin library, will give me the opportunity to deepen the study of these
references and test hypotheses of possible influences on our thinker.